Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Maritime Legislation Amendment (Prevention of Air Pollution from Ships) Bill 2006. In doing so, can I say that I thoroughly agree with the answer given by the Minister for Trade in the context of the navigation bill. I know that is also important to employment in the navigation industry with respect to coal exports. This bill is about amending the Navigation Act 1912 and the Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Act 1983 with regard to implementing annex VI of MARPOL, which came into force internationally on 19 May 2005.

I note that it is nearly two years since this amendment came into force and nearly 10 years since it was adopted by the IMO. I suggest this is, unfortunately, more than ever, typical of this government’s laziness and arrogance with respect to its legislative requirements. It is a disgrace that it has taken so long to bring implementation of this legislation before the House. The bill also makes some other interesting minor amendments unrelated to annex VI, including a change in the description of ‘pilot’ to ‘licensed pilot’; amendments to better implement the revised annex I of MARPOL; and the removal of the limit on the amount of penalty for regulatory breaches. Even so, this was not a controversial or difficult bill to bring into the House. I simply say that I believe the minister owes the Australian parliament and Australian people an explanation as to why the government is more than ever becoming so tardy with its legislative program.

I have just come from the House, where I also spoke on the AusCheck Bill, which is important in terms of maritime and aviation security. This legislative requirement, which is about tightening the provisions going to the security of people working in the aviation and maritime industry, was promised two years ago. Yet, again, it took the government two years to get this simple proposition, which is so important in our fight against terrorism, before the House.

Nevertheless, the opposition believes that the bill is a welcome step. We are finally here. This bill is about meeting Australia’s obligations as a party to the important MARPOL convention of the IMO to reduce pollution from ships. Australia has always closely aligned its legislation with the international conventions of the IMO. Australian shipping is a leader in the field when it comes to maritime security, safety, pollution prevention and contingency planning. This bill will set limits on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from ship exhausts and will prohibit deliberate emissions of ozone-depleting substances. There is also a cap of 4.5 per cent on the sulfur content of fuel oil.

The opposition believes these are the kinds of emission regulations that the land transport sector has faced for many years—because this is about preventing air pollution—and it is time that they were extended to the maritime sector as well. However, it appears to me that the focus of the bill is on oil-fired shipping. Perhaps we may have more to do to address emissions from coal-fired and gas-fired shipping when it comes to air pollution prevention in the future. It will also be important that floating production storage and off-take facilities which are covered under the Navigation Act only when they are disconnected from the riser maintain the currency of their air pollution prevention certificates.

I also note that the bill applies to vessels greater than 400 tonnes, whereas most other IMO conventions apply to vessels greater than 500 tonnes. Therefore, I point out to the House that some ships which have not been used to operating under IMO conventions will now be brought under the act and into this net, at least for this convention.

There is one other anomaly I noted, in relation to two definitions of ‘Australian ship’, which I seek clarification on. In one case an ‘Australian ship’ is defined as a registered Australian vessel while in another it is defined as a vessel having Australian nationality. I believe that the legal framework is complex enough without introducing ambiguities in these definitions. I for one am unclear as to what the definition actually means. I therefore seek clarification from the minister with respect to those issues.

As I said earlier, Australia has always and appropriately closely aligned its legislation with IMO conventions and therefore sought consistent and high international standards when it comes to maritime safety, security and protection of the environment. The environmental protection measures in this bill are welcome, but much more needs to be done when it comes to maritime security, which is a huge concern to the opposition and to the Australian public generally.

I refer to the fact that some changes were made last year, which the opposition supported, including simplified procedures to make changes to security plans and shorter statutory time frames for approval of security plans that are so vital in the fight against terrorism. But I remain to be convinced that the government can actually manage to implement these changes.

Let us take the issue of maritime security, for example. In doing so I refer to the failure of the government to ensure that, as required by law, all ships advise of their cargo and crew 48 hours before they reach an Australian port. I would have thought that that would be fairly fundamental if we are serious about maritime security in the fight against terrorism. I refer to this because last year information was given to the Senate which told us that just 67 per cent of ships coming into Australian ports actually comply with this requirement. A third of ships do not comply with the law. I wonder why this government has failed to be more rigorous with respect to the application of this law. Of those ships, half do not inform authorities about their cargo and crew until they have actually entered the port. I simply say that it is all too late to be doing it after they are in the port. There are rules and regulations and it is about time they were adhered to by ships coming into Australian ports, because they are potentially a time bomb for the Australian community.

Another area of concern and, in my view, a dereliction of duty on the part of the government, relates to its failure to carry out comprehensive security checks on foreign crews. This is an issue that I have been raising throughout the great majority of my years in parliament, having first raised it when I was shadow minister for immigration and employment prior to the 1988 election. It has been an ongoing problem. There have been some changes by government, but I simply suggest that the checking of foreign crews is totally inadequate. This is an important matter that will consistently be raised by opposition members and senators, both publicly and in the parliament, so as to try to press the government to get serious about this issue.

For example, when it comes to foreign crews, the names on the manifesto are checked against existing databases, usually after the ship is berthed. That is about seeing if any of these persons are not wanted in Australia. Surely we should be making sure those checks are done before ships with foreign crews enter Australian shores. The fact is that there is no way of knowing whether the people on the ship are who they are, and no security checks are done on any of them anyhow. This is inadequate and, frankly, a dereliction of duty by the Howard government, specifically by the minister for transport in association with the minister for immigration and the Attorney-General.

Conversely, let us have a look at our own seafarers. They are correctly and appropriately required to undergo the most rigorous and thorough security checks by the Australian Federal Police and ASIO. This matter is currently the subject of debate in the House with respect to the Attorney-General’s AusCheck legislation, which the opposition is supporting. These people have to have a maritime security identification card similar to those used to clear workers in our airports—requirements that the opposition has always supported. Aviation security identification cards and maritime security identification cards certify that the holders of the cards are people of good character and good background who can work in security-sensitive areas for the betterment of the Australian community. Why is it different for foreign crews?

We believe that this is a very important security measure. It is a measure that the Australian public appropriately expects, because they want to be assured that they are in safe hands when it comes to our airports and our ports. The same just cannot be said with respect to maritime security. As my colleague the member for Brisbane put very well recently, the Howard government hands out permits for flag of convenience crews like it was a Friday night chook raffle at the local pub in the port of Brisbane. None of the checks that are carried out to give us confidence in Australian seafarers are carried out on any of these flag of convenience vessels.

The use of ships of convenience was a measure originally introduced to handle peak periods of demand, but since 1996 the Howard government, in its extreme campaign against the rights of Australian workers and maritime unions, has used these measures to replace Australian ships and Australian crews on a regular basis. We believe that they are not only causing unemployment for Australian seafarers and the destruction of our own maritime seagoing industry but also potentially sacrificing the safety of Australian sea lanes, our environment and our ports. They are exposing our maritime points of entry to the hazards of foreign crews handling dangerous goods, like explosive-grade ammonium nitrate, to the potential for tourists to smuggle explosives and weapons into this country and to the potential for other criminal activities to run riot.

I am also very concerned about the lack of commitment by the government to working with industry, including the maritime unions and the workers in the industry and their families, to ensure that well-trained, highly skilled Australian seafarers maintain their pre-eminent role in the LNG shipping trade, which is going to become more important to Australia with the growth of our exports to China. I point out that for over 25 years we have had in place a highly successful continuity of operations agreement between the North West Shelf venturers and the maritime unions which has ensured the safe, reliable, on time delivery of LNG cargoes to customers around the world and notably to Japan. This agreement has served Australia well. The agreement has served us well not only because it is about making sure that we guarantee security of supply to receiving nations but also because we can rest easy in the knowledge that LNG tankers will operate safely in the sea lanes and ports under the control of highly skilled, security-cleared Australian seafarers.

The Japanese, Chinese and Korean LNG receiving terminals also regard this as being important because it means they have a high degree of assurance that their cargo vessel and onshore terminal facility will be secure when an Australian crewed LNG carrier is in port. They expect it to be secure. But, alternatively, when it comes to foreign crews and foreign vessels coming to Australia, we do not apply the same high security standards in our own ports, many of which are in key capital cities and provincial cities.

We can be sure that pollution prevention measures, like those addressed in this bill, will be properly carried out as well. It is about making sure that, with respect to the important debate about emissions, we are doing everything possible to pull our weight both domestically and internationally. I refer in passing to a report produced by Sandia National Laboratories, under contract to the US Department of Energy, entitled Guidance on risk analysis and safety implications of a large liquefied natural gas (LNG) spill over water, which made mention of the fact that Australian LNG risk management strategies are world’s best practice—and so they ought to be. I raise this because I believe this is one of the strengths of the Australian LNG industry and its reputation, which is important to the issue of trade and export earnings, as a reliable, safe and environmentally responsible supplier in the global marketplace. One of the principal reasons Australia has been able to maintain this important position in a very tough global community is that we are a reliable shipper of LNG.

It also goes to the fact—I raise this today because the Labor Party, as the opposition, have some fears—that currently the system is that shipping contracts have been written on a delivery ex-ship basis, meaning that the seller controls the shipping. The opposition would be concerned if there were any move away from ex-ship contract terms to free-on-board shipping contracts, where the seller generally controls the shipping. In our view, a move to free-on-board shipping contracts weakens Australian involvement in the LNG transportation task, introduces more flag of convenience shipping into the LNG trade, risks Australia’s reputation as a reliable LNG supplier and creates potential and serious new security risks here and in the ports of our customers. They do not want it; nor do we want it in Australia.

I firmly believe the same level of commitment to risk assessment and high-quality risk management strategies cannot be guaranteed if ships contracted to carry Australian LNG are drawn from second-rate flag of convenience registries with crews whose identity and security checks are unknown to the Australian authorities. As I said earlier, we are already exposing our maritime points of entry to the safety, security and environmental hazards of foreign crews handling dangerous goods like explosives grade ammonium nitrate. I obviously do not want this extended to the LNG trade because this trade is so important to the future economic prosperity of Australia and it is of exceptional importance to key regional economies—for example, the state of Western Australia.

This aside, on behalf of the opposition I indicate that we support the step forward embodied in this bill, which is correctly about improving the prevention of pollution from ships, but I also ask that the minister and the department do more than is currently being done to tackle equally important issues like maritime security. In conclusion, in the opposition’s opinion, Australia deserves better when it comes to our national security and the protection of our maritime borders and entry points. I commend the bill to the House but also remind the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services that I have raised a couple of issues of clarification with respect to definitions, which I will seek assistance on. Thank you for the opportunity to address the House.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support statements made by the shadow minister in his contribution to this debate. The Maritime Legislation Amendment (Prevention of Air Pollution from Ships) Bill 2006 implements Australia’s obligation to reduce pollution from ships as a party to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, MARPOL 1973 to 1978. In particular, it implements annex VI, which was adopted by the International Maritime Organisation in September 1997 and came into force internationally on 19 May 2005.

The amendments set limits on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from ship exhausts, prohibit the deliberate emission of ozone-depleted substances and set a global cap of 4.5 per cent on the sulfur content of fuel oil. There are some minor amendments unrelated to annex VI, including a change in the description of ‘pilot’ to ‘licensed pilot’, amendments to better implement the revised annex I of MARPOL and the removal of the limit on the amount of penalty for regulatory breaches. The bill amends the Navigation Act 1912 and the Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Act 1983.

I would firstly like to raise the issue of the continuing voyage permit and the single voyage permit ships that operate around the coast of Australia and how these ships impact on the ability to ensure that Australia meets its obligations in relation to the amendments to the act. I would argue strongly that the amount of control we as a nation have over those ships is severely limited because these ships tend to be outside the jurisdiction of this nation.

I would like to share with the House an example of one of these ships and how our knowledge and ability to influence what happens on them is limited. I have visited ships issued with continuous voyage permits and single voyage permits. The flag of convenience ship I have visited, which I have mentioned many times in the House, is the Angel III. This ship sails under a Maltese flag, with a Greek captain and Burmese crew. The crew of this ship were very nervous and very subservient, and their inability to speak English and the fact that all the signs on the ship were either in English or in Greek created questions about how safe the ship was in their hands.

There have been many stories about flag of convenience ships, which are often flagged under one country, have a crew from another country and a captain from a different country again. Many of these ships have been identified as rust buckets floating on the seas around our coastlines, and they have the potential to impact on the environment. The Australian government’s inability to ensure that these ships will observe the amendments in this proposed legislation really raises some serious concerns.

I would argue that the government’s decisions and actions in the maritime area have been driven more by its ideological hatred of the MUA and more by its workplace relations legislation than by what is actually best for the shipping industry of this country and for the protection of our environment and the global environment.

On another note, coal was previously shipped from Catherine Hill Bay, within the electorate of Shortland, to the port of Newcastle on a wholly Australian owned vessel, an Australian crewed vessel, captained by an Australian captain. That was the MV Wallarah. You could look out to the ocean and see the Wallarah off the coastline and be secure in the knowledge that there would be no pollution on our beaches. Unfortunately, that vessel has been sold. It is now a flag of convenience ship sailing around the coastline of Australia. The potential for environmental damage to our shores by these flag of convenience ships is quite enormous.

I implore the government to look at the national interest and revisit this issue of single voyage and continuous voyage permits, which, as the shadow minister informed the House, were initially introduced to meet peak workloads. They are not the exception now; they are the norm. That is the way that shipping is conducted around Australia in the overwhelming majority of cases.

As well as the potential for an environmental catastrophe, there are other impacts. There is the impact on our shipping industry as a whole, because the shipping industry is an employer not only on ships but on shore. There are a number of shore related businesses associated with Australian shipping. These have all been affected by this government’s ideological opposition to the MUA.

We are an island nation. We should have one of the strongest shipping industries in the world. Potentially we have the expertise here, which we are fast losing because of the approach to shipping by this government. But instead of following down the track of developing, nurturing and improving the country’s shipping industry, we have gone down the track of selling out on it.

The shadow minister mentioned a very important issue, and that is the security issue and the fact that foreign crews are not subject to the same scrutiny as our Australian crews. They do not have to have the maritime security card that Australian crews do and they do not have to have the same level of identification and security checks that Australian crews and Australian maritime workers have to have.

The government cannot really be serious about security if they allow these foreign crews to come in without proper security checks and to not have to notify the port until 24 hours before; as the shadow minister said, half do not advise until they are in port, and the security checks on these foreign crews are non-existent. If they are not checked properly, how can you ensure that the person that they claim is on the ship is actually on the ship?

There are enormous issues surrounding the maritime industry. We in the opposition support these changes, but we implore the government to revisit all the issues surrounding the Australian shipping industry, and to commit to building a strong shipping industry for our island nation, put aside their hatred of the MUA and join with the opposition in ensuring that we have a shipping industry that will set us up for the future and place us in a very good place in the world and use the expertise that exists in this country.

Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the outset I have to thank the member for Shortland who, with a very short period of notice, has filled in and spoken for me. Because I was speaking in the chamber on another bill, the AusCheck Bill 2006, I would not have been able to participate in this debate if it had not been for her good graces in speaking off the cuff. So I thank her very much and now I will get on with it.

There is a conjunction here in terms of the bill I have just been speaking about in the House—and the Attorney is now summing up in relation to that bill, the AusCheck bill, that seeks a better coordination of identity checks in the aviation and maritime area—and this bill, the Maritime Legislation Amendment (Prevention of Air Pollution from Ships) Bill 2006. The second reading was given by the parliamentary secretary, the Hon. De-Anne Kelly. There is a direct connection with a series of other bills. At the end of last year we were dealing with pollution of the seas directly from a number of different agents and materials carried on ships. These matters have now been dealt with.

I imagine—and the parliamentary secretary may be able to elucidate—that we are, if not at the end, close to the end of the series of bills dealing with this particular area, because most of the schedules should now have been covered. What we are looking at is a worldwide attempt to come to grips with problems of pollution from major ocean-going vessels and particularly cargo vessels. It relates to the problems we have seen with the lack of double-hulled ships and those terrible experiences, from one end of the earth to the other, of ocean-going tankers full of petrol foundering and spreading their contents across the ocean. Last year we dealt with a bill concerning the manner in which chemicals should be carried.

What is required is not just a set of regulations but very practical work in this area to come to a new set of standards to obviate the most significant problems by ensuring that future ships will be double-hulled and that, as we go forward, the problems with material spilling out of ships will be significantly lessened, because there is a tremendous cost to what has happened.

When you look at the provisions in the last few bills we have dealt with and this one, you see that you do not do this sort of stuff on your own. This is an example of the Australian government cooperating with other governments overseas, shipowners, operators and the people who regulate this worldwide to ensure that we sign up to making our oceans safer and cleaner places. It is part of a broader thing. We live in a modern, industrialised world. I go back to the early sixties, when I was finishing school, and the late sixties, when I started university. One of the most seminal books written at that time in the economic area was called The stages of economic growth by Walt Rostow. What Rostow laid out was really the story of developing countries from then until now. He argued that it was possible to go through a series of stages of economic growth; that those stages could be relatively well predicted, enhanced and pushed forward; and that the worst of countries—the ones with the least amount of capacity—would be able to get their acts together and build towards a more prosperous future.

What Rostow was predicting we have really dramatically seen in action in China and now, increasingly, in India. As Deputy Speaker Somlyay would well know, we have already seen a range of European countries have their own economic revolutions. Hungary, of course, was one of the great leaders, even when it was still under domination in the Soviet bloc. That demonstrated that the native capacity of the people could be harnessed to really dramatically change the nature of their economy and the way in which their society was run.

Linked into the stages of dramatic growth we have had has been a dramatic increase in the amount of industrial output. So much pollution has been poured into our air and so much damage has been done to not only the atmosphere but also our seas and rivers. The story of the last 20 years or so—in the eastern bloc in particular since the fall of the Russians and the opening up of the dreadful consequences of pollution in that Soviet bloc—is of a new awakening to the dangers of pollution in an industrialised world. Latterly, we are finally on a road not to Damascus but to somewhere else. I am not sure where it is. Maybe it is a road to Kyoto or somewhere.

The Prime Minister has had a latter-day pastoral conversion and now recognises, as President Bush finally concedes, that we actually do have climate change. There is a worldwide scientific consensus. In the past six years there has been a deliberate campaign on the part of the Bush administration in the United States to deny the reality of climate change—to lessen it, run sceptical arguments to try to derail that acknowledgement and boost up any of the antis over that period of time. That has been a considerable blockage in terms of dealing with the fundamental problems we have.

We have to deal with air pollution. We have seen state governments grapple with this over many years. If you live in the Sydney basin—if you are privileged to do so—you will know that that basin, because of its very nature, years ago was pretty bad in terms of the way pollution was building up. There was an understanding of just how significant the actions needed to be if you were going to fix up the problems with CFCs. That is the best example we have so far of cooperative activity worldwide to address major environmental problems.

The government is doing the right thing here, as it did in the previous bill, to moderate the deleterious effects of air pollution from ships. If we look at the particulars of this, we are dealing here with annex VI of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships 1973-78, the MARPOL agreement. In September 1997, that was adopted and it was fully brought into play on 19 May 2005. If you connect annex VI of this with the other things that have been dealt with, we are looking at a significant attempt to moderate the environmental effects of shipping. There is a lot of shipping worldwide; there is a lot of shipping that needs to be controlled. There is a lot of shipping of the nature of ‘ships of shame’. Much of that has been cleaned up through this kind of mechanism or will be, but it is absolutely important that it is. The amendments set limits on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from ship exhausts and they prohibit the deliberate emissions of ozone depleting substances and include a global cap of 4½ per cent on the sulfur content of fuel oil. That is a good step and an important one. You should not be afraid of regulating and you should not be afraid of operating in a multilateral environment. You should move to fix things as necessary.

If only we had the same kind of commitment from the government in broader areas. This is where you need to not only recognise the problem but realise that you have to actively move in order to fix it. There are a number of things that we have moved that the government has so far not taken note of adequately enough. But we have to in the maritime area ensure that everything we can possibly do in order to address not just pollution but safety and security is done. There are many ships travelling to Australia with foreign crews that are not listed. We do not know what cargo those ships carry and we do not know their crews. We need to address that adequately and properly if we are to have not only a clean but also a secure maritime environment. That is particularly the case where we have cargo vessels coming to Australia loaded up with ammonium nitrate and other noxious substances that could be released.

This has a security dimension. We need to ensure that a continental Australia, a maritime Australia, is secured and secured efficiently and effectively by deliberate government action. We have run through a whole series of measures that could be directed towards that. I would encourage the government generally, as I have just encouraged the Attorney, to look very closely at these areas and to step up moves with regard to securing the containers running through Australian ports. The government has actively been part of a multilateral compact here to put into place annexure VI and a series of other measures that the parliamentary secretary was involved with last year. They should move expeditiously to do the rest of the job to ensure that the broader area is fixed. I will leave my comments at that.

De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like firstly to acknowledge all of those who have spoken on the bill and thank them for their contribution. In summing up, annex VI, prevention of air pollution from ships, of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships 1973-78, the MARPOL agreement, came into force internationally on 19 May 2005. Australia’s accession to annex VI relies on domestic legislation being in place. The bill will allow Australia to enforce more stringent requirements on emissions from ships, thus demonstrating the government’s continuing efforts to further enhance Australia’s marine pollution prevention regime. Industry supports the amendments.

I would like to go, however, to some of the questions raised. The member for Batman had a concern about definitions of Australian vessels. The provision in the bill ensures that all ships with Australian nationality are covered by the act. Furthermore, the Shipping Registration Act allows unregistered ships to have Australian nationality. In other words, the definitions comprehensively cover all vessels. There have been a range of questions going to maritime security raised by the member for Batman and other speakers. This bill does not relate to maritime security; it relates to air pollution. Nonetheless, the questions were asked in good faith and I will ensure that a response in writing is prepared for the member for Batman and others who have raised those questions. I commend the bill to the chamber.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.